


Letting Go

by DaisyNinjaGirl



Category: Never Let Me Go (2010)
Genre: Ethical Issues, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2011-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 02:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyNinjaGirl/pseuds/DaisyNinjaGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Near Hailsham School, a woman is arrested for theft.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letting Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sansets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sansets/gifts).



It was after 6 o’clock, and I still had one more case to see.  I leafed through her file absently as I hurried through the corridors – being a public defence lawyer means you get the worst cases: the destitute, the socially inept, the kind of people who can’t manage to find their own, rather better paid, lawyer.  And it means that judges get pissy if you don’t make it through your cases at a reasonable clip.  Emily Brandt was my last case of the day, and if I could clear through the initial briefing quickly, I’d be able to get off to dinner with a clear head.

She was a middle aged woman, surprisingly well dressed compared to most of my clients, and she’d been crying.  Well, again, many of my clients are pretty upset at being arrested, but there was something in her demeanour: I knew it was her first time here.

“Well, Miss Brandt,” I said, sitting down.  “I’m afraid you’ll be in the cells over night, but I’ll get you into an early hearing tomorrow for bail.”  I checked the listed charge.  “Theft, I see.  No prior convictions?  Then there shouldn’t be any problem.  I assume you’re planning to plead guilty?”

She stiffened.  “No.  No, I’m not guilty.”

I peered at her through my spectacles.  “I assure you, Miss Brandt, the police have a good prima facie case against you.  You’re extremely likely to lose the trial – why, you were even found with the stolen goods on your property...”

“The little boy, you mean,” she corrected.  “I was found with the boy on my property.  His name is Tony B.”

“The, er, juvenile.  It says here that the police constable broke down the door when you wouldn’t open it, passed through the house, and found the juvenile waiting in the garden.”

“He wouldn’t run.”  Emily Brandt’s voice cracked.  “In all those weeks he lived with me, Tony wouldn’t run, wouldn’t go through a door without my permission.  I had to put a beeper box by the front door or he’d panic when I took him out for walks.  Even when I was screaming at him to go, save himself, he couldn’t bring himself to climb over the fence.  It was only knee high...”

“Well, that’s as may be,” I said briskly.  “There’s considerable evidence that you committed the theft, or at the least was an accessory after the fact.  Miss Brandt, I assure you, your outcome will be considerably better if you spare the court the cost of a trial.  I must recommend-”

“It doesn’t matter about expense, or what the ‘outcome’ is.”  She sat forward in the chair, her eyes intent.  “No one cares right now.  The Hailsham students are just farm animals to them, livestock that’s tidily tucked away.  If my case goes to trial, people _have_ to notice, even if it’s just a small article at the bottom of the crime pages.  And maybe one person in a thousand will read it, and start to care.  That’s worth something.”

I shook my head at her, exasperated.  “Civil disobedience hardly ever works, madam.”

“Will I go to prison?” she asked, humbly.

I reread the details in the file.  At last: “No, I don’t think so, even with a not guilty charge.  It’s only theft, after all, not kidnapping, and the stolen goods were undamaged.  No, you’ll probably get a fine and some community service, I think.”

Miss Brandt nodded.

“I used to live on a farm,” she said, “when I was a girl.  I left, of course, didn’t much have the heart for it.”  She smiled wryly.  “As you might have guessed.  But I learnt the difference between sheep and dogs.”

“I’m not sure where this is going...”  The clock ticked inexorably onward.

“A dog,” she said, “will give you its heart.  It will run for you, fight for you, give you more love than anyone could ever deserve.  And you can train a dog – train it to never cross a line, or a threshold, no matter what; not if it’s starving or its owner is being attacked, it’ll bark and yell, but it won’t cross.”  She rubbed her eyes wearily, like a small child trying not to sleep.  “A sheep isn’t so smart.  They’re not stupid, not exactly, but they don’t see well and they’ll run from something they don’t understand.  You have to _pen_ them, all the time, to stop them wandering.”  She shrugged.  “And mostly that’s alright, and you’ll keep them and raise them until it’s time to send them to the abattoir.  But sometimes... a sheep will learn that it can work with another one, that two can pull out a fence post and get to some other field.”

I glanced at my watch, not discreetly.

“And then, you see, the farmer has a problem.  All the sheep that were in the field now know how to pull up fences.  And if you separate them, all the other sheep that they’re pastured with will know also.  And on, and on.”  She sat forward suddenly.  “I sometimes wonder, you know, whether places like Hailsham are raising dogs or sheep.”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” I said, and knocked on the door for the warden to open it.  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Miss Brandt.”

“I’m sure you will,” she replied.  She seemed, somehow, more confident than when I’d first come in.  “I’m sure you will.” 

***

At Hailsham School, Tony B woke in the dark.  There was no nightlight here, not as there had been at the Other Place, and he missed it.  In the beds around him, his cohort breathed and snuffled in their sleep.  It had been so quiet at the Other Place, and there he had felt uneasy too, missing the easy comfort of boys his own age.  It was confusing.

In the dark of the night, Tony rolled out of bed, and softly padded to the door.  He eased the dormitory door open and crept down the stairs, desperate for a breath of still cool air.  The great front door wasn’t locked - people didn’t lock things at Hailsham, but there was a beeper box, of course.  Tony raised his wrist to tag out, then paused.  He looked at it closely instead, and slipped through the door silently, with no record of his passing.

The cool dew of the fields waited for him.

**Author's Note:**

> I saw Never Let Me Go quite recently and found that it's really stuck with me - not so much that people could use humans as organ donors, but the dreadful passivity of the donors. They hated what was happening to them, but it never ever occurred to them to run away or challenge authority or anything, and there's this horrible acceptance from the non-donors in the story that nothing much can or should be done about it. This ficlet is attempting to write out that feeling a little.


End file.
